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top3 on the The Design Files

[FROM THE ARTICLE BY LUCY FEAGINS]

... Top3 By Design offers a carefully edited selection of design products from Australia and around the world. Stocking a maximum of three products per category, Top3 simply aims to showcase the best functional products and design pieces in the world, by merit of design.

Launched in 2001 by Terri Winter, Top3 has grown to four stores nationally, the latest of which, in Melbourne’s Richmond, is the biggest and most impressive yet.

There’s a lot to be said for editing. In fact, it’s often more challenging to come up with a succinct shortlist, than it is to just offer every possible option in any given category. But, as joyous as shopping can often be, don’t you sometimes wish that someone with great taste would just round up the TOP 3 products in any given category, eliminating the need to trawl the internet for endless options, product reviews and comparisons? YES. You do. Well, I do anyway. I’m not into endless options. I want a shortlist.

It’s this premise that has driven Top3 By Design for 15 years since it first launched in Sydney. Driven by a passion for great design, Terri Winter launched her business in 1997. At the time, she was working as a graphic designer, running her own small design agency. In fact, when she took on the lease for her first store in Crows Nest, Terri was running her design agency upstairs and the retail store downstairs, but within a few short years, Top3 had taken over!

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Fifteen years on, Top3 has grown to 4 stores nationally, the latest of which, in Melbourne’s Richmond, is the most impressive yet! The Richmond showroom is Top3’s largest store, and has given Terri and her team the opportunity to showcase furniture and larger design pieces in a ‘living context’. The store stocks an incredible range of international design classics alongside the work of independent designers and smaller Australian design brands.

‘Our collection is a mix of classics, from the Iittala Aalto Vase designed in 1936 and the Bauhaus chess set, designed in 1923 – both still incredibly timeless pieces – right through to kickstarter projects like the Memobottle, an Australian product by two Melbourne friends to tackle the issue of single use water bottles’ Terri says.